*Back on topic*
Since we're talking about Monochoice - why is this relevant, now? Well, we
can all afford R5 for a movie. (The privileged amongst us are paying that
in bandwidth anyways.) What most of us can't afford is R50, and what even
fewer can afford is R500/month.
The solution is to charge R5 or something negligible per movie, or per
view. A handful of individuals have done that (eg.
) - and made
more money than by going through media houses. But the media houses are
cagey about doing that - because they're run by the rich kids who never
learnt to share, who are afraid to fail, and who are not yet convinced of
the model, and whose parents didn't make their money that way. *So they're
dipping their toes in the water with R99/month - and they want insurance. *
Are they hedging all of this on their market research? How good is that
research? They might not get double the uptake if they halved their premium
monthly cost, but I'm pretty convinced that they will make more money than
they are currently if they slashed it by 90% - so *perhaps all it would
take is for someone to convincingly make the case to them.*
Am I seeing things too straightforward? Am I mistaken about the market?
Doesn't everything boil down to the size and shape and needs and demands of
the actual market, and our inability to reach consensus about it, and where
everything fits in - and if we saw it as such, couldn't we find better
solutions to our current conundrums?
Coenraad Loubser
WISH Networks (Pty) Ltd.
2nd Floor, Merriman Place, Cnr. Merriman & Bird Str, Stellenbosch, 7600, ZA
Office: 087 805 7480
Skype: Coenraad_Loubser
Email: coenraad(a)wish.org.za
Cell: 073 772 1223
Web:
-- Spending Money is like watering a plant.
On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Coenraad Loubser <coenraad(a)wish.org.za>
wrote:
On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 11:13 AM, Nic Roets
<nroets(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 12:07 PM, Alan Levin
<alanlevin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 12:02 PM,
ubuntupunk(a)gmail.com <
ubuntupunk(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Multichoice have a bad track record when it comes to telling the truth
> about anything, the company has its genesis in a concession granted
under
the
regime of PW Botha.
Jan Vermeulen, has an equally bad track record for believing everything
that comes out of the nochoice monopolies arse...
We like to believe that the press is balanced, unbiased, fair and all
that.
The reality is that it's a business in decline. They need to keep the
attention of readers. So, occasionally, they take a controversial stance.
You have a business case for quality press right there - but not one that
media companies are not following. You're only 10% of their audience, so
expect to see only 10% of articles catering to you. And for those who focus
on readers like us - have to consider that we're paying double: once for
the content, and once for the time and attention in opportunity cost.
Pop media follows the masses. Only when the masses have reached a certain
level of intellectual maturity will the dynamics change. ...But there is a
feedback loop.
Even in the USA, the press does not have the
staff to properly research
and
analyse everything. Then they rely on PR companies with a hidden agenda.
Read this insightful article:
http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Anyone who has watched Superman knows how it works. But yes, we forget,
in our naive strive for our ideals...
Let's not demonize the media - At the core they're just holding mirrors up
to us. I think we *would be surprised* at the amount of "in-depth
research" it takes to spark up controversy and "invoke panic and fear".
But ... thanks for giving me something to think about, today.
*If you have 15 minutes more... why this isn't a simple matter*
If fear and mistrust is not what the economy runs on, and if someone has
come up with something better, I'd love to see it... in fact, I would love
to dedicate my life to getting it out there. (I think I am... but I can't
put it in commercial terms yet, because the commercial language and
paradigm for that isn't quite here yet.)
The is a very interesting topic - actually - because it is not a simple
matter. It goes *right to the core of almost everything relevant in
today's world. *We used to fight about land, now we're fighting about
virtual land... because we evolved in a world of scarcity - it's in our DNA
- yet, we evolved this tool, our mind, with which we are busy creating the
promise of abundance.
At the heart of almost everything is this conflict between our
scarcity-survival-instincts, knee jerk, me-first emotions, versus our "I'm
just a cell in the human organism"-human hearts-and-minds.
Almost everything that the economy has done for us, to date, has been
there to reduce our reliance on a few, and increase our reliance on the
many. It looks evil, up close, but if you stand back - what's happening?
Could it be? Is the economy growing the human family?
Everything is sprinkled with subtlety. Opposites so far apart, or close
together, it becomes easy to confuse the two and draw the right
conclusions.
What does money buy you? Doesn't it, at its core, simply replaces trust?
What does the law buy you? It replaces trust. If you made a deal with
someone, but you know the law better than him, you can pay a lawyer to undo
the deal and to take what he thought was his.
The whole economy seems to be a replacement for the core virtues in my
life: trusting (and loving-following-leading) my neighbor.
Money seems to lead you to believe that if you have enough money, that you
won't be dependent on anyone and that you won't have to trust anyone -
through no fault of it's own - that's all us.
Our shortsighted, unenlightened interpretation, a result of our hasty
judgement, the one that was necessary to survive in a world of scarce
resources.
How did the biggest hedge funds and financial empires grow? By playing all
sides of the field. By spotting the correlations between everything - even
when they couldn't rig everything in their favor. But what could
Black-and-Scholes not work into their equation? Social dynamics. Political
unrest. The short-circuit, me-first-and-me-only thinking that made possible
the preservation of our most precious organ (our brain), through an
evolutionary minefield*...
The one that keeps us from seeing that, after all, we are the government
workers, we are the law practitioners, we are the businessmen, we are the
entrepreneurs. We are the media.
But what does this all have to do with copyright?
Brace yourself for more lay interpretations, from me - please do correct
me if I'm wrong.
Well, firstly, what is copyright?
Copyright is there to protect money - money invested into a certain thing,
in order for that thing to be able to grow with the money of the copyright
holder.
It is there to hedge/guard against the seed capital going to waste by
virtue of someone else with more money/resources/influence/power to copy
the idea.
Why is this necessary? Because otherwise those who do not yet have enough
of the above, would not stand a chance. (Ironically, there is a big layer
of the population who even have so much less, than they can not even afford
this "copyright" liberty afforded, supposedly to them!)
So it affords a way for someone to be the go-to person for something. The
responsible party. The "land owner". He can build a castle, or a town...
and see if people are willing to live their under his rule. If it doesn't
work out, it gives a deadline by which anyone can come and ... in a way,
tear down his town - by building a better one next to it, and drawing
everyone there, rather.
So let's think ideologically... is this where copyright came from? When
did creative works enter the equation? And where's the line between ideas,
creative works and media/entertainment?
Well, creative works seems a natural outflow of "ideas" and
media/entertainment a natural extension of that. (But does it take into
account the ecosystem of creative works/media/entertainment that leads back
to new ideas? ... well, yes, it seems to - in that modifications are
afforded...) ... But isn't everything, by extension, even our education,
science, physics, accountancy, arguably copyright-able? ...And shouldn't it
be?
Does nature have some sort of natural copyright mechanisms built into it?
(How does copyright relate to money and counterfeit notes?)
(If you're a lawyer, you're probably by now fuming with my misuse of the
word "copyright". So give me a better one! I'm trying to convey the
archetype that underlies nature, that has lead to copyright...)
It does seem obvious that copyright is only relevant in a world of scarce
resources... one we still find ourselves in.
.
So shouldn't copyright-ability have a way of measuring whether something
will lead to more- or less scarcity? And it only be warranted in the second
instance? But how do you even measure this? And how do we get people to
reach consensus that this is indeed the way to go?
Well, lets look a bit at the media/entertainment side. If it can in fact
change people's habits, minds, and beliefs... which I think we all know it
can, and do it better than we'd like to admit - what is the essence of what
is being copyrighted here? (Assuming that it is in fact relevant.)
Isn't that essence, at it's core, the freedom to not be brainwashed? ...
And if copyright law makes it more difficult for people to be
brainwashed... by confining media to those willing to pay for it...
It all kind-of comes full circle, back to the "Apple philosophy". The more
you pay, the happier you are with your purchase. Because Mammon will make
it so, pull the strings on his puppets to create the perfect hell of people
telling people what life is all about. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, a
Truman-show-like effect that's difficult to escape from.
But one that elegantly seems to be taking care of itself.
All you need to do is to decide if you want to be inside the bubble, or
out.
...If only it was that simple. Because we are indeed caught inside...
trying to find our way out.
But do we need to prick the bubble to get there? Are we dependent on this
bubble? And won't pricking it lead to us losing the good in it... and won't
it inevitably lead to an even bigger one forming? But will that one be
better? Will it be better, even if it's only the goalposts that have
shifted and the words that have changed, but the basic dynamic staying the
same? Doesn't that explain our dilemma of not being able to agree, because
we can't even reach consensus on where we are, where we're going... and we
seem to be burying everyone who is trying to draw up a map.
Which leads us to the question: Should we follow what the rest of the
world is doing? Should we try something new? Or have we, somewhere in our
treasure chest, some idea that works - that we can stick with, and work our
way back towards? One so good, that it is inevitably one that the world
will copy and follow, from us. No copyright involved.
Perhaps there's a higher ground, from which we can look back on all these
silly misunderstandings... and see the diamond for all the different angles
we've been trying to show out to each other, not realizing that the angle
the other is seeing is just as real.
--
* "An evolutionary minefield...?" - Or a machine perfectly tuned to
creating our brains in its current form?... Where are we at? Why is 90% of
all wealth in the hands of 10%? Is it because only 10% of us have the
intellect needed to care for the rest? Or is it because only 10% of us
think we need to, and pretend we are, while doing the opposite? How does
this relate to pack mentality, and alpha males? How does gangsterism relate
to corporatism? ... and where does this fit into the endless cycle of
centralisation and decentralisation...?
According to the MBTI (a flawed, but well understood and widely studied
personality profile theory) - 75% of people act on information of the
"sensory" type, who - simply put - cares about- and lives for today while
25% of people consider primarily their intuitions about the future. So...
if you want to do something worthwhile, now, so you can be lazy later,
you're already in a way, part of a minority... and you need to make money
and keep it safe... (but have you worked out how much you really need?) ...
and what do you invest in - and how do you hedge that investment against
the biggest threat to it? What is the closest thing we have as a hedge *against
*the economy - without it being completely wiped out? What will banks
eventually end up using so that they do not have to trust each other? What
has turned this concept of novelty.. perhaps the same one that underlies
copyright, into a tradable commodity, one that will have value in the
absence of any government enforcing it's value, but one that will give
power and value even to the governments and banks of today...
Coenraad Loubser
WISH Networks (Pty) Ltd.
2nd Floor, Merriman Place, Cnr. Merriman & Bird Str, Stellenbosch, 7600, ZA
Office: 087 805 7480
Skype: Coenraad_Loubser
Email: coenraad(a)wish.org.za
Cell: 073 772 1223
Web:
http://wish.org.za
-- Spending Money is like watering a plant.